Indigo Lifelines

Indigo Lifelines

I was born in New Hope near the City of Brotherly Love. They say

it snowed the night I was born, that they held me up to the window.

Humans had not yet landed on the moon.

Diapers had safety pins—a man in a green uniform dropped

them in a bundle by the door. I made a drawing of my uncle as a

light blue flying angel in heaven and gave it to my mother in her grief.

Summer Camp meant my name in red capital letters on a brown paper bag,

PB&J, graham crackers. I crawled to the window during nap to spy on my

brothers who were old enough to raise the red, white and blue flag.

Their white mouse bit my finger when I tried to touch him.

I didn’t bleed, but I was in trouble. A curving burnt umber road

took me to an old farmhouse where nuns in gray veils taught me

to count. In a house full of chaos, books structured the cosmos.

Sunday Mass meant breakfast at the diner, my father in an Irish

tweed jacket, fresh squeezed orange juice. My father traveled

for work every chance he got. My mother said he had bigger fish

to fry. I wished I was a bigger fish: a rainbow trout!

Us kids played in the shallow creek, made stick boats, turned green

turtles upside down and right again. When Kennedy was shot,

my mother took it personally, wore black, draped the mirrors.

My father moved away. I taught myself to ride a banana seat bike.

I moved into the hurly-burly of high school. Edited the paper.

Did not go to prom. In college I learned some names for what I felt.

Eventually, I let a girl undress me. The family coalesced into recoil.

Boston became my safe harbor—I learned to read the I-Ching’s golden

coins. I tried to revisit my childhood, but it was still closed for repairs.

The years went on and on like this. A Chinese sepia scroll of ordinary

life unspooling. One day, in a crowded park, I noticed the extra length

of everyone else’s indigo lifelines. My life is heading wherever song

lyrics slumber underground until roused by a forgotten melody—

Kate O’Neill